When the Pope reinstated a Holocaust-denying bishop, he unwittingly set off a …

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If only Benedict XVI had unleashed the power of the Google before putting St. Peter's two keys to work, the Vatican might have been spared a major embarrassment. In a letter to Catholics, the Pope now promises to pay more attention to the Internet.

At issue is Benedict's decision to reinstate four bishops who had been improperly ordained and were then excommunicated. Unfortunately, one of those bishops is an arch-conservative who (greatly) minimizes the Holocaust.

Benedict explains that he knew nothing of these views and that he acted only out of spirit of reconciliation. "So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small," he told his bishops in a letter. "That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept."

"Uproar" is putting it mildly; voices around the world raised the spectre of antisemitism, and one of our own writers began referring to Benedict as the "Nazi Pope."

The media was a bit incredulous that the Vatican claimed ignorance of the bishop's views, which were easily available on the Internet. In his letter, though, Benedict notes that Internet news has not exactly been a Vatican priority.

"I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on," he wrote. "I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news."

The Vatican has certainly said the right things when it comes to the Internet and mobile phones, but one suspects that the Curia is not yet staffed with those who actually rely on such technologies on a daily basis.

For World Youth Day last year, the Pope sent a text message to those attending the rally in Sydney. Benedict also puts out thoughtful messages about the new digital world ("the so-called cyberspace") each year on World Day of Communications; in fact, if you check the timestamp atop his most recent message, you'll note that Benedict has gone so high-tech he is actually posting from the future.

But despite such attempts, the Vatican knows that it really needs to rely on younger Catholics. Benedict may send his text message, but the hard work of "the proclamation of Christ in the world of new technologies requires a profound knowledge of this world if the technologies are to serve our mission adequately. It falls, in particular, to young people, who have an almost spontaneous affinity for the new means of communication, to take on the responsibility for the evangelization of this 'digital continent.'"

That continent is being evangelized (as many physical continents were) by groups like the Jesuits, which have launched a high-quality UK podcast designed to encourage 10 minutes of prayer while riding the Tube or driving to work.

But, as the Pope's recent controversy shows, ceding the Internet wholly to the young isn't good enough; even the aging Pope's advisors needs to pay more attention to "that source of news." The Pope probably doesn't need a Facebook profile, but his team could probably learn some basic lessons in e-stalking renegade bishops.

"So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small,"

Which is why he will rescind the excommunication of a holocaust denying antisemite and then excommunicate everyone involved when a nine year old in Brazil aborted twins that resulted from her rape, twins that doctors told her would kill her if she carried them to term. It is also why he will condemn the use of condoms in Africa as being part of the problem, a message that will likely lead to many cases of AIDS that would otherwise be prevented. Notice the order he listed priorities, faith first and then hope and love.

It isn't that the Vatican is out of touch with useful information on a given subject, but that it is out of touch with compassion. He is out of touch with the social issues as well as the technological tools of our current age. The catholic church needed a Pope that was in touch with the time he lives in- instead they got a rigid and dogmatic dinosaur that is ill-prepared to sheppard his church through the given times. Catholicism is going to suffer as a result.

Yeah, or the young people could do something constructive instead, like learn a skill that will serve them in life, rather than squandering their time and lives worrying about some obsolete religion. Let the old noobs make fools of themselves, I say; just getting us that much closer to a day when religions are dealt with as artifacts of a bygone era.

The Vatican doesn't make it their business to formally condemn every crackpot conspiracy theory on pain of excommunication.

Williamson wasn't excommunicated for his views on the holocaust, so it doesn't come into play in reversing the excommunication. The whole thing is a matter of internal housecleaning that has absolutely nothing to do with the outside world. It barely even has anything to do with the individual Bishops.

The Vatican either didn't know about his views, they didn't realize people would fuss over it, or they just don't care what people think. They might have been able to do a better job explaining things, but it probably wouldn't have made any difference.

I suppose if I weren't at work, I could spend the whole morning responding in minute detail to even just the handful of comments already placed, let alone the dozens yet to come. I'm not sure it would accomplish anything, however.

It's astonishing, though, that a site with so many smart people is marked with such IQ dead zones. Generally, if a programmer says, for example, "In .NET, failure to properly remove a delegate from a event whose defining object is going out of scope can result in a memory leak," those who don't understand the technical terminology will at least understand that they need to do a little research before they can tell whether the person is out to lunch or making an important point.

But the same people skim a news story and make all sorts of snarky comments they think are intelligent, when in fact they are the equivalent of, "Memory is a piece of silicon with some doodads on it. It can't leak, THERE AIN'T EVEN ANY WATER IN IT!"

So they congratulate themselves about their keen observations of the order in which someone talks about "Faith, Hope, and Love" and drag out tired (but still PIERCING) rags on infallibility, with the nonsense being passed around like strong cocktails.

And above all, we hear about how what we REALLY NEED is to be led by our technology-- marshaling our technological resources according to a disciplined and reasoned worldview is insufficient. Actually, inherent in the word 'worldview' would imply comprehensiveness and cohesiveness, which is, ultimately, the real beef most people have with Benedict in particular and the Catholic Church in general. Ahh, well. That's not a discussion likely to be resolved in the journals combox.

I suppose if I weren't at work, I could spend the whole morning responding in minute detail to even just the handful of comments already placed, let alone the dozens yet to come. I'm not sure it would accomplish anything, however.

As it is, whatever you did manage to write hardly cleared anything up.

The moment the Pope, the Vatican, or the Catholic Church in general contributes anything new to science and technology we'll be all ears. Until then, whatever pratfalls he/they suffer as a result of their ignorance will simply be amusement for those who resent their other harmful 'worldviews' outside of technology.

And please tell me - when did papal infallibility ever get taken off the books? What a stupid, arrogant, and counter-productive position to adopt in the first place.

Let's review what's happened here. The Vatican acknowledges its shortcomings in the technological arena, prompting what I thought was a reasonable write-up in Ars. Then people start responding in typical ways that betray at least as much ignorance of what they attack as the Church has of matters technological. More, probably.

I wrote above to pick some of the fruit hanging low from the silliness tree. Yours was within easy reach, because you seem to imagine that this matter has anything to do with papal infallibility.

Even looking at Wikipedia offers the following definition: "Papal infallibility is the dogma in Catholic theology that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error[1] when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation." In order for something to be recognized as infallibly promulgated, a specific and demanding set of requirements must be met, among which are the subject matter, formulation of the decree, the capacity in which he speaks, and the audience to whom he is speaking. None of these have been met in any aspect of this discussion.

Excommunication is a pastoral act for a specific purpose: the rectification and reconciliation of a member of the Church after the member's commission of a particular offense. It isn't merely a declaration that so-and-so is a bad person, and conversely its removal isn't a statement that the person is therefore good. Since the goal is reconciliation and not simply punishment, the excommunication can be lifted even before the complete resolution of the original offense if, as in this case, there is indication that the punitive act itself is presenting a barrier to otherwise good prospects of reconciliation. And in this case, the original offense had nothing to do with the crackpot ideas of one of the parties concerned.

In other words, this was a matter of a serious and specific offense. The lifting of the excommunication was not concerning matters of faith and morals, was not formulated as a statement of doctrine, was not issued directly by the pope himself (it was proclaimed by Cardinal Re under the authority given him by the pope), and was not addressed to the whole Church. However much a scumbag Williamson himself may have been.

So, you'll be all ears "the moment the Pope, the Vatican, or the Catholic Church in general contributes anything new to science and technology?" Contributing to either of those is not the intention-- or the pretension-- of the Church.

You, however, try to make contributions to the field of doctrine. Would that be in your capacity as a scientist, perhaps, or rather as a technologist? And you want to conclude it by talking about "a stupid, arrogant, and counter-productive position?"

There's the non-starter right there. When any organization adopts a set of beliefs and elevates it to the status of non-negotiable policy, they have forfeited the right to discuss anything in a modern context.

A lot of what comes out of the Vatican is indeed stupid, arrogant, and counter-productive (at least to anyone who isn't part of the Vatican), and the idea of even entertaining 'papal infallibility' (in any context) as a self-aware adult is a pretty alarming admission of superstitious thinking. Sure, it can be wrapped in the term of 'divine revelation', but so can the ramblings of a wino on any street corner.

Only an adolescent or delusional mind can promote such nonsense without flinching. The catholic church does this on a daily basis, and controls the minds and behaviors of a billion people around the world. If they can't even keep track of the sayings of one of their own clergy before reinstating him, why should we take anything else they proclaim seriously?

Originally posted by Handor:So, you'll be all ears "the moment the Pope, the Vatican, or the Catholic Church in general contributes anything new to science and technology?" Contributing to either of those is not the intention-- or the pretension-- of the Church.

From what I can tell it's intention is to have sex with little boys, and ensure Africa is allowed no protection against AIDS.

It's pretension is thinking it doesn't have to justify itself to others as it does it.

When any organization adopts a set of beliefs and elevates it to the status of non-negotiable policy, they have forfeited the right to discuss anything in a modern context.

Yes, modernity is so concerned with the question of what happens if it's wrong that it rarely stops to consider what happens if it's right. So it's very ready to take one piece of an established institution or code and decide that that institution or code is much too imposing or constrictive and that society would be better off without it.

[Note: Incidentally, it rarely stops to consider the consequences of such an action action, and especially of the impact of admitting the counter-proposition. Generally this involves a lot of vague hand-waving about people with all sorts of different ideas manage to be good people, and how could anything bad happen? It also follows that people in modern society always have an excuse not to follow through on their own principles (and Catholics, of course, are as susceptible to this temptation as any group).]

So, when a person comes along and has the gall to insist on following a logical system of thought to its logical conclusion, modern people cluck their tongues and quirk their eyebrows uneasily.

And that, essentially, is what your idea of 'elevating beliefs to non-negotiable policy' boils down to. The official teaching of the Catholic Church is a judgment of the magesterium on the application of established doctrine to questions facing it. Concerning those conclusions, there is an extent to which a Catholic layman may disagree. But disagreement beyond that is logically inconsistent with the foundational tenets of the Faith and, therefore, incompatible with considering oneself a Catholic. And that is the full extent of whatever "policy" you think seems "non-negotiable." I'll leave the final conclusion: is it anti-modern to insist that one be bound by the logical conclusions of a system of thought one has freely chosen? Perhaps so. And to be honest there are lots of us who don't care.

Now, it so happens that the phrase "papal infallibility" makes people think that it is the Catholic position that a pope can do no wrong, which is manifestly not the position of the Church or the popes themselves. Papal infallibility is a development of the doctrine of the ecclesiology of the Church and takes its roots in the fundamental understanding of the Church's relationship to God.

And that, finally, is where this line of discussion must end: if you don't believe in God, or if you have fundamentally different ideas about the relationship of God to humanity, then tilting at papal infallibility as being superstitious is rather silly, because presumably you feel that the whole package is nothing but superstition.

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Only an adolescent or delusional mind can promote such nonsense without flinching. The catholic church does this on a daily basis, and controls the minds and behaviors of a billion people around the world. If they can't even keep track of the sayings of one of their own clergy before reinstating him, why should we take anything else they proclaim seriously?

So, you think that the Church is powerful enough to use the Jedi mind trick to control "the minds and behaviors of a billion people around the world." It's no wonder that you think it should be trivial to play thought-police on its 1.4 million clergy. I regret to inform you, however, that you are mistaken on both counts.

In case you aren't familiar with this case, in addition to the facts already made clear in this thread (i.e. that the excommunication had nothing to do with the crackpottery of anyone involved), Williamson wasn't even the main subject under consideration. The question was on the schismatic Society of Saint Pius X, and its reconciliation to the Church was the goal. That Williamson's deficiencies escaped notice was perhaps a mistake, which is perhaps precisely the reason that the Vatican made a point of correcting it.

As for you, you are free not to take anything the Church says seriously, but going off on a pet peeve about papal infallibility has nothing to do with any of this. You might have come in here and simply said "I don't like Google; the Vatican should use Windows Live instead" and it would have been basically as tangential. Don't like Catholicism? Congratulations, you've got lots of company; but if you honestly think that this article has any bearing on whether one should or should not believe it, you'd be wrong.

The sexual abuse scandals were shocking and reprehensible. There can and should be no excuse made, and those involved, in whatever capacity, should be appropriately punished and removed from the positions that enabled them to perpetrate these crimes.

However, if you think that sexual abuse is the sovereign province of Catholicism, youhadreallybetterthinkagain. It is a problem wherever people are in positions of authority, and while the Catholic Church is no exception, there is certainly nothing "Christian" or "Catholic" about it.

As for Africa, even the most cynical of observers, feeling Church is a power-mad manipulative institution, should be able to see that the Church has no reason to want Africa to wallow in epidemic. Catholicism is growing faster there than almost anyone else, and "ensuring" that Africa continued to suffer from this plague would not be in its interests. And more fair observers should be able to see that the pope shares in the sorrow of all of us who see the problems there.

With that in mind, there are two reasons for the Church's resoluteness on the matter of condoms in Africa.

First, it believes that contraception is a grave moral evil, one which also has broad negative influences on society. The rationale here is explained in a papal encyclical called Humanae Vitae, and much more detail can be found in John Paul II's Theology of the Body. The argument draws on various sources, not one of which is a conviction that "sex is bad," though naturally the conclusion is unpopular. The Church maintains this position in spite of its unpopularity because of what I mentioned above-- its commitment to its understanding of the truth and the necessary conclusions therefrom.

The second reason the Church doesn't endorse the use of condoms to prevent AIDS is because it holds that it is never admissible to do evil so that good may come. In other words, the ends do not justify the means.

Now in the entire foregoing discussion, "evil" is understood as objective harm to a human person or society, both of those considered holistically. In other words, "evil" means mental, physical, or spiritual harm. Thus what I wrote immediately above should be interpreted in the following way: The Church feels that the distribution of condoms to fight AIDS would do greater harm in the final analysis than the harm the condoms aim to avoid. Given that conviction, asking them to distribute condoms would be like asking doctors to go back to lancing veins to purge bad blood for diseases. They won't do it, because in their view it's harmful to the patient.

No doubt you disagree with this, and that's your right. But if the Church has any power at all, it has it only because there are those who do agree with it.

As for the supposed "pretension": First, the Church cares more about justifying itself before God than before you, and the former is by far the more difficult to do. Second, it has always been forthcoming about the rationale underlying its judgments. You may disagree with them, but as far as I can tell, they no more need your permission to do their best to live justly according to their principles than you do their permission to live according to yours.

I'm sure that the Catholic Church (And probably other denominations by association) are going to be scorned for lack of savvy when it comes to technological issues. That's well and good, but when people do that, could they please refrain from exhibiting their ignorance of religion?

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Posted by El Chupageek:Notice the order he listed priorities, faith first and then hope and love.

That wasn't an order of priorities, it was a quote from 1 Corinthians 13 which is talking about the superiority of these virtues over spiritual gifts. It's one of the most famous parts of the Bible, being particularly popular at weddings (despite the context being completely unrelated to such events and actually being a criticism of unloving attitudes) and ends with the phrase 'and the greatest of these is love.'

I have plenty of issues with the Catholic Church, but this is not a mission statement to value faith over hope and hope over love.

Originally posted by Handor:However, if you think that sexual abuse is the sovereign province of Catholicism, youhadreallybetterthinkagain. It is a problem wherever people are in positions of authority, and while the Catholic Church is no exception, there is certainly nothing "Christian" or "Catholic" about it.

While Christianity or Catholicism doesn't have a monopoly on sexual abuse, they do have a monopoly on how they react to it, and how systemic it is.

Churches (and Catholic churches in particular) have systematically covered up cases, paid off victims and their parents, and they even move predators around to obfuscate the crimes and ensure no one area has too many victims. This doesn't happen in any other organisational structure (except maybe Scouts, which is a Christian organisation, too).

The type of crime is particulary Catholic. It's almost always young boys being molested by adult men. Catholic clergy rarely molest young girls. If a protestant priest is going to molest someone, it's more likely going to be a girl.

I always assumed it was because Catholic priests are supposed to abstain from sex, to be virtually "asexual", so a lot of guilt-ridden homosexual young men enter the church to make their "problem" go away, or at least be irrelevant.

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"ensuring" that Africa continued to suffer from this plague would not be in its interests.

Rubbish. A suffering people are a lot more likely to be hard-core religious. You see it everywhere a people is repressed, poor, or sick. The Vatican started off as a form of government, they know how all this works. They know exactly what their doing in Africa. An AIDS ravaged people is a devoted religious people.

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No doubt you disagree with this, and that's your right. But if the Church has any power at all, it has it only because there are those who do agree with it.

Which is why it continues to support doctrine that results in death and misery - they love company (and the control).

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First, the Church cares more about justifying itself before God than before you, and the former is by far the more difficult to do.

No it's not - STOP RAPING CHILDREN. That would be a good start. STOP PROMOTING SICKNESS AND MISERY AROUND THE WORLD. That would make God really smile.

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You may disagree with them, but as far as I can tell, they no more need your permission to do their best to live justly according to their principles than you do their permission to live according to yours.

Brilliant. Even you admit it's "their principles", not Gods. Gods is quite explicit about his principles, all a Catholic has to do is read the bible, but the Vatican used to butcher people for doing that. It only removed the death penalty for reading god's word in the 60's (with the Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965).

Not only can I justify my value system and my principles to myself, I can justify it to others. The Vatican can do neither, they use vague handwaving and say "it's not up to us to understand god's motives, now hold my frock for me while I rape this child."

Please ... Technically AIDS is spread by promiscuous sexual behaviour. Condoms indirectly will promote promiscuity. But condoms also fail, sometimes, 10-45%? ...of the time (10% failure rate per year use for couples in becoming pregnant whereas diseases are transmitted anytime, not just during ovulation as in pregnancy). Therefore condoms would increase the spread of AIDS by creating a wrong sense of security. This is what journalism/blogs, etc. should have reported for example last march. Condoms are not a panacea... this is what I understand the Pope said... you can't condemn a rationale like that. And if one reads all the Pope has written on any subject, boy you will see that he is pretty articulate... So the media/comments/blogs, etc that condemn the Pope on any subject need to research a lot more: faith is one thing, reason is another thing, the Pope is articulate in reason, thus one can't defy the Pope by arguing one's "lack of faith" when the Pope or anyone for that matter addresses your reason. Reason is used marvelously on Ars. Technical problems are solved, analyzed... this site is a real nice place to be. But reason should be applied "as" rigorously in social, ethical, philosophical, faith, matters as with science. Good reasoning, whatever you are analyzing, is like a nice OS, good reasoning solves problems.

"I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to...

...rescind a thousand years of claiming 'papal infallibility'.

Welcome to the real world, Popesy. Your wisdom and morals are no better than anyone else's on this planet, despite what you've been told.

This is old, and I don't know why I'm bothering, but:

Papal Infallibility has only been part of Catholic dogma for 139 years. And it's only been claimed once (the Assumption of Mary was defined as an article of faith in the 1950s). And it isn't a claim of general infallibility, all it mean is that when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he can define what makes up Catholic doctrine. EG, he can declare that the Assumption of Mary is an article of faith, meaning that if you don't believe in the Assumption, you are not Catholic.

Yeah, your choice nowadays is to worship the Pope, Mary, or Jesus as a "god", all of which are people and not the invisible jewish skywizard the entire mythology is based upon. Yes, it's a mythology. If Zeus is a "mythology" then so is the Abrahamic God as well.

@rga - nice justification, but unfortunately it is based on utter misinformation. To start with AIDS is not spread, rather HIV is. AIDS is a syndrome, ergo simply a collection of symptoms, while HIV is the virus that causes the symptoms. Additionally, the failure rate of condoms in heterosexual sex is around 2% in general, and less than 1% with the more durable and thicker varieties (its the prevalence of "ultra-sensitive" very thin latex condoms in western nations that push the average up to 2%).

Additionally a common infection vector in Africa is between a married couple. The use of condoms dramatically reduces the odds of transmission in those cases. For them, statistically the condom would only rupture once every 100 times, and at that point the uninfected partner is not ensured to contract HIV as each instance of exposure doesn't have a 100% transmission rate.

The best protection is abstinence, but very few humans can effectively combat natural impulses completely. Ergo the prevailing wisdom is to promote reduced intercourse with suitable protection (condoms), recognizing the realities of human behavior, to reduce the spread. This is not arbitrarily decided, but actually backed by a little something called inquiry based research, or as you might know it, science. The Pope is ignorant at best if he thinks that advising that condoms not be used is at all realistic. I doubt he actually believes that it will reduce HIV, but rather that his dogma trumps human life.

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The second reason the Church doesn't endorse the use of condoms to prevent AIDS is because it holds that it is never admissible to do evil so that good may come. In other words, the ends do not justify the means.

What a boatload of bullshit. I could produce hundreds of examples where the church clearly doesn't believe that, but the easiest is the most recent- is not the current Pope actually doing evil in ignoring prevailing scientific wisdom to advocate his dogma? Of course, all of that is simply a line that he can feed true believers so that they don't question his lack of morality (morality, incidentally, is not obedience to a book, but rather by governing your decisions based on compassion). Isn't he doing a good deal of evil by appearing to accept the anti-semitic views in rescinding these excommunications (especially in light of his own questionable history) even if he believes it is part of reconciliation? There are few acts that have no negative consequences, and the church certainly hasn't restricted themselves to just those acts.

@Jonathan BoydYeah, you are quite right, however seeing the three out of context didn't immediately click (which is quite stupid on my part, it was the origin of my wife's sorority's slogan, so she has half a dozen items throughout the house with it on them). My mistake

This discussion has been really eye-opening. In a time when people spout on about tolerance, and how religious people are so intolerant, they themselves drag out intolerance with all the justification they need to feel good about themselves.

Here's a counterpoint to the usual religious-people-are-intolerant myth:

I'm religious, not Catholic, and I'm tolerant enough to respect the Catholics and their beliefs. End of statement.